Out of Sight is Out of Mind: Make Your Strengths Visible
ADHD Education
Your signature character strengths need to be visible every day. They are important prompts to remind you of the human capacities which express the best in you. They represent your core essence, authentic self and are imbued with positive emotions, and energy, which can be the fuel that drives your internal engine to pursue important goals in your life.
My experience in using the free VIA Character Strengths survey with hundreds of adult clients with ADHD, is that they first need to be educated about how the invisible challenges of their ADHD manifest; not as a means of identifying their “brokenness," but as a way of understanding their unique brain wiring replete with character strengths.
By identifying their top signature character strengths, and integrating them with an understanding of how their unique ADHD brain wiring works well in specific situations, adults with ADHD can take their new self-awareness and utilize their VIA character strengths to create consistent success and fulfillment.
Adults with ADHD struggle with self-regulation of their attention, intention, emotions, and more. When they learn the discipline of "pausing to pay attention" to their unique brain wiring and align it with their signature character strengths it will activate their brain to take action that builds forward momentum and progress.
However, without visual, auditory reminders, or what I like to refer to as prompts, they often forget them. Unfortunately, without any prompts, adults with ADHD automatically go to their their negative default mode of thinking, which holds them back. This often leads to procrastination, rumination, and immobilization.
Character strengths provide a powerful, positive language of what is best in each one of us, and balances out the negative, pervasive thoughts with the positive emotion and feelings they often generate. Your character strengths such as CREATIVITY can inspire you to take action in innovative, divergent and engaging ways.
Your signature character strengths, when easily accessible in a modality that is easy to relate to can become prompts which remind you you to pay attention to what's the best in you every day — but, only if you consciously pause to engage your focus and recruit them to support you in pursuing sincere, passionate goals.
At the ADD Coach Academy (ADDCA) every certified coach learns and practices how to empower their ADHD clients, of all ages, to embrace what's best in "who" they are and also by:
- Educating each client how their unique ADHD brain wiring works so they can successfully make it work for them
- Encouraging full expression of each individual's authentic character strengths, talents, processing modalities, and more, so they can live more inspiring and fulfilling lives
*The ADD Coach Academy is the largest, comprehensive ADHD coach training program accredited by the ICF (International Coach Federation) and the PAAC (Professional Association of ADHD Coaches).
